Wednesday, April 19, 2006

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENN!

It's been quite the year for you. Now eat some cake and celebrate! Have a wonderful day.

Monday, April 17, 2006

On the road again

Well...I've been at Google almost a full quarter, and as of Friday I have been moved twice. The first time was a minor move up one floor. This time was a bit more major as I got moved into another building. I now share an office with one other guy (Alex) instead of a cube of three or four people, and I have a window! Woo hoo. The building is brand new, and has easier parking, showers and all GOLDEN GRAHAMS you could want in the microkitchen. I think I'm set for life :) We've got an office pool going how long we're staying in this particular location, and I'm considered the optimist at guessing a year.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

On a road bike eh?

Here's a funky little nike advert...dave you've probably already seen it? But I thought it was pretty impressive to see Lance do this on his road bike!
Click here

Friday, April 7, 2006

An Inconvenient Truth

So this week was a rather interesting one. Google has these things called tech talks which are presentations made with the sole purpose of educating Googlers on just about any topic you can imagine. As you would expect, several of these talks are very deep computer science type discussions (i.e. Smoothed-Dirichlet Distribution: A New Generation Building Block), but they actually cover a variety of topics, and outside speakers are encouraged. There are usually two to three tech talks being given every day, and it would be very easy to do nothing else than attend tech talks full time.

Today I attended a talk called "An Inconvenient Truth" presented by the honourable Al Gore (yes...that Al Gore). I have heard several people describe Al Gore as a boring speaker, but his talk today was one of the best talks I have ever been to. The man is articulate, intelligent, funny and can think on his feet. He spoke for about 90 minutes on the effects of what he calls the climate crisis, and I was riveted the entire time. He then answered questions for 30 minutes afterwards, and gave good direct answers. His ability to speak well, answer unprepared questions, and sound coherent was in sharp contrast to the members of the current administration. He even pronounced nuclear correctly. He received multiple standing ovations from a packed room of about 600 people.

More important than how he spoke though, is what he spoke about. Mr. Gore considers global warming and the climate crisis to be "the biggest challenge this species has ever faced" and if 1/10th of the information that he presented today is true, I find it hard to argue with him. I can't begin to tell you a fraction of the information that he told us about, but I can tell you how to get your hands on it. They have actually turned his presentation into a movie that will be released in May called "An Inconvenient Truth". Please click here for the trailer. The film is based directly on the presentation I saw today, and I'm sure you will find it as fascinating as I did. The facts are simple to understand, and the truth that Gore speaks couldn't be clearer. Gore is also releasing his presentation as a book and all funds from both the movie and the book will be going directly to Climate Crisis . The website is not much to look at right now, but will be evolving rapidly. Also, copies of this film are going to be delivered free to every science class in America.

Please spread the word about this movie. Blog about it, talk about it, convince your friends to go see it. Find the most skeptical person you can, drag them to it, and then get them to discuss it. This is not a Michael Moore style documentary. Gore is not attacking anyone nor is he preaching. He is just trying to make people see that there is a problem and that we must do something about it. There are very few things that I get passionate about, but this talk really moved me.

The other talk I attended this week was given by Dr. James Watson on DNA and the brain. You may know Dr. Watson as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule along with Francis Crick. Sadly I was a little disappointed in this talk. Dr. Watson didn't really go much into his research into DNA and the brain (the so called nature vs nurture dispute) which would have been fascinating, instead spending more time rambling from one topic to the next. His talk about his research years with Crick were interesting, and his passion regarding research into autism is obvious, but he sounded and looked unprepared for the talk. He is obviously a man with very strongly held viewpoints though, and he is definitely not afraid to be "politically incorrect".

Thursday, April 6, 2006

Empty Nested--again

Brennan and Julie were delivered to the airport this morning, their bags heavy with new purchases and Mexican treasures. It was sad to see them go but we have lots of happy memories of their two weeks here. They should be back in Glasgow by noon tomorrow. I appreciate the fact that they are doing the travel and time change. Not my idea of a good time.

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

someday i'll beeee a part of yourrrr....WWOOOOORRLLLD!

Just for you shanny...recognize the scene? I couldn't go behind the rock, or find a rock with a better splash...but hey!

And-now-from-something-a-little-disturbing-dept.

Clicky here

Monday, April 3, 2006

Beach Bums

I ran into these students from Glasgow on the beach at Mismaloya. I thought they looked a bit familiar. Anyone recognize them?

Saturday, April 1, 2006

Vallarta Chamber Orchestra

The recent Chamber Orchestra concert here in PV received a wonderful reception from the audience and had this very flattering review in the local newspapers. (Yes, two of them published the same review word for word--such a surprise!). One does what one must to promote culture. Do I have a new career in my future?

Guilt Guilt Guilt

While I'm in a posting mood, I thought I'd throw this chart out for discussion:After a brief period of activity after my last guilt trip, things have died down some recently....

Shan, haven't you been to Mexico recently? I'm sure you have some lovely pictures to show us, or stories to tell.
Jen, did you tell folks about the 1/2 marathon you are training for?
Mom, how's things with the orchestra down there in PV? No interesting gossip to share?
Bren, aren't you and Julie down in PV right now? What are you doing for the summer? Nothing to rant about?
Dad....you're being beaten out by Keira, and she can't even type yet. No stories to share about the theatre group?

Maybe next time you are thinking of sending a mail out to everyone, you may think "hmm..I could post that to the blog!" and share it with everyone.

End of guilt...now I really will go and play with Keira.

Armchair quarterbacking

Instant replay
Perfect hindsight
In slow motion
You're always right
Watching life on tape delay
You know what happened yesterday

An armchair quarterback
You'll never have to lose
You'll never have to wipe the dog shit off your shoes
An armchair quarterback
Do you get those armchair blues?

-- Armchair Quarterback by Ten Foot Pole

As I wander around the internet on a daily basis checking out blogs I'm interested in and chasing down bits of news/gossip/stupidity that amuses me, I've been struck by the amazing amount of folks who are willing to post their opinions on things that they have absolutely no clue about. Not only are they willing to post their opinion, but they are then willing to fight just for the fun of fighting. For the most part this arguing becomes pure pointless noise, and completely obscures any real information. As a good example I would point people at the following conversations which all occurred around the exact same topic (Scott Byer (from Photoshop) blog, macslash, Rich Schaut (from Microsoft) blog, Discussion on Ars Technica). There is no need to go to the actual links, unless of course you are interested, as the topic being discussed is rather arcane.

Basically people are wondering why Adobe hasn't shipped new versions of it's products yet for the new Intel Macs. Scott Byer, an extremely talented engineer off of the Photoshop team, posted a very good description of why it is taking Adobe so long to ship those new versions and was very frank about the issues that they were/are running into. Kudos to Scott. What blows my mind is that after Scott's nice post, there are pages of comments from people telling him that he is completely wrong and that he has no clue what he is talking about. Not only that, it spills over into Ars Technica, MacSlash, and probably several other sources that I didn't bother tracking down. Rick Schaut puts together another nice post from Microsoft's point of view...and still got folks posting that he didn't know what he was talking about. How many people in this world have experience porting a million line piece of code from CodeWarrior to Xcode? Ummm...well let's see. I can count about 1 person from Google (heh), 6 folks from Adobe, probably about 6 from Microsoft, a few from Apple and really that's about it. I know that there's some folks from Blizzard and Maya who have ported some big apps over, but I'm not sure if they fall in the million line+ category. So where are all these other opinions coming from? Why do they feel that they know anything about the topic? It's very obvious from some of the posts that they haven't even written any code before, let alone tried to port from one compiler to another. I spent over 8 months of my life working on doing the switch for a large application, and ran head first into most of the issues that Scott and Rick describe in their blogs. Ironically both blogs actually refer to me (not by name) as being an example of why the Xcode switch can be so difficult to do.

Getting away from this specific example of commentary stupidity, I want to emphasize that I fully support everyone's right to voice their opinion, but PLEASE try and make it an educated one. If you don't know the answer, or are curious, there is no shame in asking questions instead of arguing. It just helps educate everyone, instead of leaving multiple pages of useless discussion that educate/help no one.

Maybe the next big web app will be a way for folks to be able to prove their authority on a subject so that people who are interested can easily filter out the drivel of anonymous cowards. Hmmm...sounds like something a Googler could work on :)

Sorry to bore everyone with a Saturday afternoon rant. I'm going to go play with Keira now.

Sado-masochism 101

Regular readers will know that my friend Eric conned me into signing up for an adventure racing course. Well, the course weekend finally arrived last Friday. As per usual I felt woefully under prepared in terms of both fitness and gear. I was really stressed because I had broken part of the rear suspension on my bike the weekend before on a training ride, and Steve at the shop had jury-rigged a new screw for me to hold things together at the last moment. Last thing I wanted was my bike collapsing out from underneath me at 0200 AM, 20 miles away from anything.

I sprinted home on Friday night, grabbed my bike from the shop and headed home for my last real meal. We were expected at the campground at 20:00 to pick up our course info, and find out what we were going to be doing for the next 36 hours.